


[quiet scream dream pop late at night]

by zeitgeistofnow



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: F/F, Late Night Conversations, Late Night Writing, Post-The Last Olympian (Percy Jackson), also, but ONLY the vibes. not the lyrics rly, i wouldn't call this a songfic but i wouldn't call it NOT a songfic, in which case: hard to touch u by grlwood, liminal spaces, percy doesn't come into it at all. don't worry abt him, sorta.... this def has canon divergence vibes but i don't go into it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:20:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,207
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24140467
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zeitgeistofnow/pseuds/zeitgeistofnow
Summary: annabeth turns on grlwood and leans back against the scratchy truck seat as clarisse pulls into a dirt parking lot across the street from a gas station. “are we out of gas?”“no, this is the destination.” the gas station is lit from within, red and blue block letters glowing against a white exterior. there’s no one else in the lot and clarisse hops out of the truck. annabeth can hear a puddle splatter quietly when the other girl’s feet hit the ground. she doesn’t remember it raining, but it must have. a lot of things happen that she doesn’t remember these days.
Relationships: Annabeth Chase/Clarisse La Rue
Comments: 6
Kudos: 21





	[quiet scream dream pop late at night]

“The hell are you doing up, Princess?” Clarisse asks, crunching on the end of another pocky stick. She’s sitting cross-legged on the edge of the dining pavilion in basketball shorts and a mens muscle tee. Annabeth stands a few feet away in the grass, both of them illuminated only by the slow-dying fire from dinner and moonlight. 

“I could ask you the same thing,” Annabeth shoots back. It’s a warm night and the chirping of crickets surrounds the pair. It feels like no one else is up, although in a camp full of teenagers someone must be. Annabeth couldn’t sleep, just kept tossing and turning in her bed. Dozing off and then waking up sweaty. Not because of bad dreams but because it was too warm and her t-shirt and thin sheets wrapped around her body in a way that felt too much like a web. 

“Couldn’t sleep,” Clarisse shrugs. “I used to meet Selina here after curfew. We’d take long walks in the woods.”

“And make out in the bushes?” Annabeth smirks, but there’s not as much bite to it as there usually is when she talks to Clarisse. Clarisee sneers back, but it’s a little wobbly. 

“Ha, yeah.” She flexes her arm, biceps bulging. “I mean, who could resist this?”

“No one, obviously,” Annabeth agrees. There’s a silence. Annabeth shifts her weight. She’d pulled on tennis shoes before sneaking out of the Athena cabin, but the tall grass still tickles at her ankles. “So, just planning on sitting here?”

Clarisse shrugs. “I mean. Yeah, but if you wanna go somewhere, I’ve got the keys to Mr. D’s truck.”

Annabeth glances down at her track shorts and  _ girl in red _ t-shirt and then back at Clarisse. “I’m not really dressed for much of anything.” Besides, there’s not much of anything around camp, probably for a reason. 

Clarisse’s gaze follows Annabeth’s, dragging up her body to finally rest on her eyes. She shrugs again. “Not going much of anywhere. Just wanna get away from all the empty beds. You in or not?”

Clarisse’s arms are dusted with dark hair and she holds the steering wheel of the truck like she’s driven pickup trucks her whole life. Maybe she has. Clarisse is one of the campers that’s at camp almost year round, but Annabeth doesn’t know what she does the few weeks she stays with her family. They drive down the gravel path away from camp in silence. The rainbow friendship bracelet hanging from the keychain bounces along with the road and the wind quietly screams through the open windows.

“Have you got Spotify on that cell phone of yours?” Clarisse asks, and Annabeth turns on her phone. The power on screen is bright white in the darkness of the night, and Clarisse has to squint to see the road. She still looks like she knows what she’s doing. She looks like she’s in control. Annabeth wishes she felt like she could control anything.

“What are we listening to?” Annabeth asks, grateful for the dark interface of the Spotify app.

“Your choice, pretty boy,” Clarisse says. They drive past a green sign with an arrow on it and Clarrise cusses and whips the truck back around. Annabeth tries not to look phased. The empty strawberry boxes in the back seat thump against each other and the wall. 

Annabeth turns on  _ grlwood  _ and leans back against the scratchy truck seat as Clarisse pulls into a dirt parking lot across the street from a gas station. “Are we out of gas?”

“No, this is the destination.” The gas station is lit from within, red and blue block letters glowing against a white exterior. There’s no one else in the lot and Clarisse hops out of the truck. Annabeth can hear a puddle splatter quietly when the other girl’s feet hit the ground. She doesn’t remember it raining, but it must have. A lot of things happen that she doesn’t remember these days. 

“C’mon, I didn’t drive you here so you could sit in the truck for half an hour.” Clarisse says, resting her forearms on the car door’s open window. “There’s a big fuckin’ puddle right under the car and it’s muddy as hell, so if you’re wearing those white tennies, be careful.”

Annabeth gingerly hops out of the car and stretches in the empty lot, watching Clarisse clambour up onto the roof of the car. She’s lit up perfectly by the street lamp right above her, the only non-flickering one in the lot. It looks like a spotlight, like Clarisse is the cocky main character in a teen movie, not an eighteen-year-old who just lost half her friends. Annabeth pulls herself up to sit next to her and Clarisse shoulders her gently. “I like being up here late at night. All of the puddles glisten so that they seem infinitely deep and sometimes I buy churros from inside. I know the guy that works nights.” She rubs a hand against the back of her shaved head and readjusts her bandana. “It feels so inbetween, you know. A little weird.”

_ “It hurts to touch you, it hurts to touch you. It hurts to touch you when you don’t wanna touch me too,”  _ Grlwood scream-sings from Annabeth’s phone. 

“It’s a liminal space,” Annabeth says absently, staring up at the sky. The street lights look like really bright stars if she squints her eyes. “The place between where you came from and where you’re going. It feels weird because they’re not supposed to be destinations. You’re barely supposed to register them.”

Clarisse sighs and stretches, one arm shifting subtly closer to Annabeth. Annabeth scoots closer to the other girl and Clarisse smirks at the empty windows of the gas station. “Miss me with that nerd shit. I just know that it’s a little bit how I feel right now.”

They’re in between a lot of things. Gods and mortals, childhood and adulthood. In between stories, quests. It feels like Annabeth’s life is just disastrous event after disastrous event. She doesn’t even know how to feel in the inbetween. Does she mourn for the effects of the last one or prepare for the ones still to come? She always ends up unable to do either. “Ha, yeah. It’s strange how much we exist in liminality.”

“Again with the big word,” Clarisse complains, “I know you just told me what it meant but I sure as hell wasn’t paying attention.”

Annabeth’s fingers play some long-forgotten piano piece against Clarisse’s knee. She played piano for a few weeks when she was twelve, banging out classical songs on Chiron’s old upright piano. She quit, of course. Some things aren’t meant to be.

“It means we’re the inbetween too,” she says, and when she looks back up Clarisse’s eyes are dark.

“I want to say we’re in the after,” Clarisse says quietly, an arm wrapping sturdily around Annabeth’s waist to pull her closer.

“Oh, there is so much worse yet to come,” Annabeth says. It sounds like a promise, which isn’t what she meant. She moves to straddle Clarisse, rough denim against her thighs. The other girl smells like smoke and blood. “Let's think about something else though, okay? I don’t want to worry about the inbetweens.”

**Author's Note:**

> -lol remember when i said i had a fic about rachel dare in the works? it's still in the works. here's another grlwood vibes inspired claribeth fic.  
> -i'm in a Mood and fucking obsessed with a) liminal spaces, b) grlwood, and c) claribeth so i figured i'd write this fic before i got out of the mood. love these girlssss  
> -i meant to write more abt how adolencence is already a liminal part of life because of being inbetween adulthood and childhood and then how much more strange grief makes it. in the fic oc it's more physical grief for their dead friends and family but even for us teenagers now, grieving for the superficial things we're losing to this pandemic and to the things we will lose with climate change... oooof. anyway i didn't quite manage to fit it into this fever dream of a fic so i'll shove it into the notes.  
> -also the liminal space of being between series. i got this one a bit more in the fic but still thought i'd mention it.  
> -a lot of ppl say that liminal spaces make them uncomfy but i love a lot of them! ones like hotel hallways make me feel a liiiittle like i'm gonna be murdered but a lot of them involve being somewhere at night (bc no people) and i love being places at night! the flickering street lights..... the smell of the air....... the strange feeling of being somewhere people should be when there are no people... **chefs kiss**  
> -as always, please comment and kudos. additionally, find me on tumblr [@lazypigeon](https://lazypigeon.tumblr.com/).  
>  **edit: i wrote this a few days before the fact that the lead singer is a rapist came to light. i don't support their actions in any way but im happy with how this is written so im not going to take it down. don't support the band please. there are a lot of other cool queer bands! laura jane grace and the devouring mothers are very good and the vibe is.. kinda close.**


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